Practice: Write down a stimulus, as an observation, and then notice how your interpretation morphs as you journal four differing evaluative contexts (of jackal/giraffe ears, both outward/in).

Handout for Sunday’s tele-practice group:

(Building on our experimentation with strengths & learning/growing edges, we’ll continue to explore the NVC skills which might help transfigure — Strength/Edge_Worksheet — the listening context that we lend, both to ourselves and others.)

For as Thich Nhat Hahn reminds us:Listening is a very deep practice… you have to empty yourself. You have to leave space in order to listen… especially to people we think are our enemies — the ones we believe are making our situation worse. When you have shown your capacity for listening and understanding, the other person will begin to listen to you, and you have a chance to tell him or her of your pain, and then it’s your turn to get healed. This is the practice of peace.

“Although I am not a musician, I once had the opportunity to hold in my hands an exquisitely made violin dating to the eighteenth century. What amazed me, even more than its harmonious lines or the beautiful grain of its wood, was that, holding it, I could feel it vibrate. It was not an inert object. It resonated with the various sounds that happened to resonate around it: another violin, a tram passing in the street, a human voice. If you hold an ordinary, factory-made violin, that just doesn’t happen. There can be hundreds of sounds around it and the violin remains numb. In order to obtain that fine sensitivity and extraordinary resonance of the old violin, the makers had to had an exceptional knowledge of wood and its seasoning; they were supported by the artisan tradition of generations, and they were endowed with the talent of cutting the wood and furnishing the instrument. This marvelous responsiveness is an active virtue. It is the capacity of the violin to enter into resonance, and it goes hand in hand with its capacity to create sound of extraordinary quality — music with a soul, able to move and to inspire. We human are, or at least can be, like that violin.”

The “invisible foot” ensures us that in a free-market … economy each person pursuing only his own good will automatically, and most efficiently, do his part in maximizing the general public misery. ” ~ E. K. Hunt

“We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak.”
~ Epictetus

So despite Medvedeva’s team’s … claim it’s about “dealing with tragedy and uncertainty in today’s world” per the commentary at the European championships — Sept. 11 is clearly important to the program. The audio is precisely how tragedy is communicated to the audience since Medvedeva, as talented as she is, isn’t really capable of pulling that off without a big assist. [Deadspin]

“We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history there is such a thing as being too late…We may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is deaf to every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residue of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words:
“Too late…” ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

Be Still & Know – A Zen take on biblical wisdom By Ruben . F. Habito

(Excerpted from Be Still and Know: Zen and the Bible, by Ruben L. F. Habito to be published by Orbis Books in April 2017)

Moses and the Burning Bush, illustration from the 1890 Holman Bible (courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God. (Matthew 5:8)

…We recall that when Moses on Mount Sinai encountered the burning bush (Exodus 3:14) and received a message that he was to lead his people to freedom, he asked, “Who is it who is commanding me to do all of these things for my people?” The answer he received in Hebrew was Ehyeh asher ehyeh, which biblical translators have rendered as “I am who am,” or “I will be as I will be.” Or more simply, “I am.” This encounter was a very powerful experience that defined Moses’ entire life from that point on, as he realized that he was no longer just this given individual human being with his own little ambitions and purposes in life, with his particular background and upbringing, with all the particular memories he carried up to that point, including the guilt that he may have felt for having killed an Egyptian, and all the things that he was carrying with him as part of the bundle of his historical existence. All of that just melted away in the face of this pure I am. And from that point on, he was simply a vessel, an instrument that conveyed the message of this I am to whomever he met, and all his actions were simply particular ways of allowing this I am to unfold in the various events and encounters of his life.

That is the same calling each person is called to undertake in his or her personal life, including all the particulars, the given qualities and gifts, as well as the limitations. As we allow this I am to become the pervading power that undergirds our entire life and our entire being, we understand ourselves, in all the particularities of our lives, as gifts of that pure “to be.” Then the concrete mode of being from here on becomes the particularization of that “to be” in our day-to-day life… (continues)